Payware Airports and Scenery Reviews

Scenery Review : Belluno-Southern Dolomites by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini This is the third of five sceneries that will cover the Dolomite Mountain Ranges in the eastern north of Italy. This new area covers the Belluno- Piave River Valley and Val Agordina areas, that are positioned directly south and west of the Drei Zinnen National Park, and then the Cortina - Cadore region. Here are the three regions... Each region backs on to the other with the Drei Zinnen (red) top east, then Cortina - Cadore (yellow) and now this new Belluno (Purple) zone, so in areas there is an overlap of one over the other, obviously you need them all …

Scenery Review : VNKT - Kathmandu Tribhuvan Intl Airport by Cami De Bellis One thing always stood out with VNKT - Katmandu Airport and that it was hard, I mean it is a really very hard place to to get into and then out of. In a propeller aircraft it wasn't that bad with some tight turns and their low speeds, but in any heavy it was a nightmare as the airport is basically situated in a valley with walls of mountains surrounding any entrance or escape. The various real crashes of aircraft flying into mountainsides around Tribhuvan also highlights the danger (Air Crash Investigations). There is actually only two ways into VNKT - Katmandu, directly or from the west and both…

Scenery Review - EBBR Brussels Airport by JustSim I just want to make it clear that EBBR and myself did not get off to a great start when flying in X-Plane? And I would like like to make it even clearer it has nothing to do with this EBBR - Brussels from JustSim Scenery. EBBR - Brussels Airport is known as the airport at "The Heart of Europe", and that explains my pain. You see every time I left the UK on a long haul flight, say to Hong Kong or Singapore or even Dubai, or returning to the UK from any of the above or to just to simply to fly over to Germany, I always got a bad to desktop scenery crash, and it was always EBBR that caused it? I tried…

Scenery Review : Casablanca XP by Aerosoft/FSDG You feel like going somewhere and doing something exotic! But you are also wanting to fly a route for not very long, in fact you don't want to break your two hour flying rule either? You have also flown most European connections and even ventured as far north as Iceland, but you are wanting now something a bit different, even a challenge... so what about North Africa (South Africa is too far). With all these parameters then what about Casablanca, as it is a very exotic and quite a popular destination and only a two to three hour flight from most southern European ports... in reality it is a done deal. …

Scenery Review : EDDN - Nuremberg XP by Aerosoft One thing you are not short of In X-Plane is a lot of very high quality scenery for Germany. Mainly that is because Aerosoft are based in the country (Paderborn) and are servicing their own market and also from JustSim, but that said the airport quality for Germany lately has been exceptional as with LFSB - EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (JustSim) and with EDLW-Dortmund XP (Aerosoft - recently updated). This EDDN - Nuremberg scenery is by 29 Palms who are a German art house that has done scenery for Aerosoft and Orbx, This is their ninth scenery for X-Plane that covers Bavaria's second largest i…

Scenery Review : Cortina - Cadore by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini This is the second of five sceneries that will cover the Dolomite Mountain Ranges in the eastern north of Italy. This new area covers the Cortina and Cadore Valley areas, that are positioned just to the south and west of the first release in the Drei Zinnen National Park, full review is here: Scenery Review : Drei Zinnen Natural Park by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini First of all you need to get a location of where you are in the Dolomites. It is harder than it looks in X-plane because in reality all the mountain ranges look exactly the same. The earlier Drei Zinnen …

Quick Impression : ZBAD - Beijing Daxing International Airport by Star-Atlas CHINA!... this is the first X-Plane payware from China by a Chinese developer Star-Atlas, and it is the brand new and the second largest airport in the world in Beijing Daxing International Airport. Only the MEGA and another new airport ISA - Istanbul Airport in Turkey is bigger. Bigger than Atlanta, bigger than Changi, bigger than Dubai, bigger than Hong Kong, bigger than anything, as we are now in the age of changing the demographics of air transport, the biggest airports before are now the old school system, we are in the new, new mega age. It is satisfying that X-Plan…

Scenery Review : TFFJ - Saint Barthélemy Airport by Nimbus Simulation Studios On the far edge of the West Indies chain in the Lesser Antilles is the Leeward Islands. In time the colonial European powers divided up the territories and some became English, some French and some Dutch with the Danish selling out their share to the United States that later became the American Virgin Islands. The past colonial period of the sugar industries are now long gone, most of these wide scattered territories now rely on the rich and so called famous and the influx of tourism to survive. Today Saint Barthélemy is French even though all the names are in Swedish? As…

Scenery Update : EDDF - Airport Frankfurt XP11 v2.0 by Aerosoft Aerosoft have updated their excellent EDDF - Frankfurt XP11 scenery to v2.0. Already an excellent scenery, this update does a couple of nips and tucks to keep the airport totally current and up to date. In the last EDDF update v1.10, the focus was on the installation of the SAM (Scenery Animation Manager) on all gates. But a few didn't work correctly? These were the complicated three airbridge units (A380/B748) on A54 - A58 - A62 - B25 - B46 - C14/C15/C16. Now in v2.0 they work as required. Having all th…

Scenery Review : MMMX - Mexico City International by DreamFlight Studios There were areas in X-Plane that was seriously lacking in creating the "World Class" signature that is required for a really good simulator. X-Plane has everything in great aircraft, brilliant flying aerodynamics and excellent dynamic features. But even to a few years ago, even with the Global Airport initiative there was and still is to a point still some serious holes in the simulator wanting to be filled and mostly in scenery... airports for one and for any airport outside the US and Europe. X-Plane has done well lately in scenery releases, as now a few more FSX developers …

Scenery Review : Drei Zinnen Natural Park by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini We are back into the mountains. After the excellent Mont Blanc 3D scenery only a few months ago, we shift our location now more eastwards to the Dolomite mountain ranges and the Tre Cime di Lavaredo - "Three Peaks of Lavaredo" or Drei Zinnen, set in the Sexten Dolomites of northeastern Italy. The Dolomites are not just one range but a set of ranges set out just behind Venice (Veneto) that also borders both the Italian and Austrian borders. To note that this scenery of Drei Zinnen is just one of five packages that will cover the extensive area of the Dolomites. …

Quick Impression : LGSA - Chania Ioannis Daskalogiannis XP by Aerosoft The X-Plane simulator saw a huge focus on the Mediterranean and in specific many Greek airports for scenery in 2019. All the major scenery developers with JustSim, Aerosoft and mostly FlyTampa recreated a full network of routes that were interesting and created in the Greek Island and mainland some great destinations. It has been a little quieter this year, but here is another scenery from Aerosoft for the Island of Crete in Chania - Ioannis Daskalogiannis Airport. I will note that in this Quick Impression is that I am using the misterx6 SFD Global autogen to create a Greek vista. …

Quick Impression : EGCN - Doncaster/Sheffield by FlyX Simulations Think of Doncaster UK and you think of Jeremy Clarkson, not known outside of the UK, but inside our fair country he is close to a naughty national treasure. But they didn't name the local South Yorkshire airport after him, no they choose "Robin Hood" even though the infamous robber is associated with Nottingham 50 miles to the south, and even the airport's official name is now Doncaster/Sheffield Airport minus the Robin Hood. The airport itself is the old RAF Finningley of when it was used as a base for Cold War nuclear-armed Vulcan bombers until the military airport was decommissioned in 1…

Quick Impression : KTLH - Tallahassee International Airport by Rim&Co A bit of history first. Rim&Co came screaming on to the X-Plane scene a few years ago with AYE - Ayres Rock - Connellan Airport that was a very good scenery debut, with an excellent rendition of Ayres Rock (Uluru) and the nearby Olgas (Kata Tjuṯa) and the actual scenery of YAYE was also very well executed. But the scenery suffered with an overload of objects (in outback Australia?) that was a foreboding of what was to come next, but overall for AYE it was an excellent scenery. Rim&Co's next scenery releases was SAWH - Ushuaia Malvinas Airport, but that release was followed by a q…

Quick Impression : CYYT - St Johns International by JustAsia Newfoundland or St Johns airport in particular has a very rich aviation history. The significance to the airport is solely from it's geographical position of being the most eastern airport on the whole of the North American continent. This unique placement means the airport was in the past and still is a gateway to the Northern Atlantic Ocean. Early pioneering Atlantic flights all mostly transferred though nearby Gander (CYQX) as did early service routes from the United Kingdom and Europe, and as jet aircraft became more in use and ranges got longer they then bypassed over than used these strategic N…

Scenery Update : KSLC - Salt Lake City International v1.5 by ShortFinal Design In April 2017 mister6x made the jump from freeware to payware with this rendition of KSLC - Salt Lake City International and also at the same time a change to the formal name of ShortFinal Design. As a debut scenery then KSLC - Salt Lake City International was a sensational release in every respect including the sub-$25 price. But in two and a half years a lot can change in the X-Plane simulator and so also has ShortFinal design. Significant was the release last year of Short Final design's EDDM - Munich which was a masterpiece (and won our best airport scenery of the year 2019), it…

Scenery Upgrade : EGGD - Bristol International Definitive by Pilot+Plus When I came into simulation in X-Plane9 you had to have a pretty good imagination, you would look at a scenery depicting a place or airport and it sort of resembled the same real world context, but in reality you knew it fell very short or mostly you simply got no realistic feel of that place or area. So your main purpose and journey in simulation is to find and seek out that Holy Grail of realism on the screen, to be and feel the very place the scenery is representing. To date it has been over a decade of collecting and adjusting the various components to create this Holy Grail of a real…

Scenery Upgrade : EDDL - Düsseldorf International v2 by JustSim If you follow a lot of the reviews here on X-PlaneReviews you will be very familiar with EDDL -Düsseldorf International, as it is a mainstay scenery in our reviews for the western European areas of the simulator. Düsseldorf is a great central Europe scenery and has a lot of benefits, and yes while EDDF -Frankfurt is a more obvious choice, but it is also a very heavy scenery to use computer wise as it taxes the system quite heavily and I am hoping the Vulkan/Metal change will give me more options in using that scenery. So EDDL is usually my pick of the most efficient German central Europe airports …

Scenery Upgrade : UUEE Sheremetyevo Airport XP v2 by Drzewiecki Design Early in 2015 the Drzewiecki Design studio released X-Plane's first Russian scenery in UUEE Sheremetyevo Airport XP. Personally I was very excited, in that of what X-Plane can do in allowing you to explore new frontiers, new countries, new areas. So a trip to Russia was going into another brand new frontier with finally with a quality payware scenery as a destination. If any scenery shows the explosion of detail in X-Plane over the last five years it is UUEE - Sheremetyevo. That first review visit was really to an isolated scenery in a barren wilderness in more like Siberia than…

Quick Impression : LIMC - Milano Malpensa XP by Aerosoft What is it about Milano Malpensa in Italy? this nothing to do with the scenery or even X-Plane. I have been looking to do a quick overview of this new scenery release from Aerosoft (via a conversion with Windsock Simulations) and I have had not ONE single day of good weather? It's rained, its been so foggy you can't even see the tails of the aircraft, its always dull, dark and it is still raining and raining? wet, wet, wet says it all... My routing takes me to Italy a lot, I go to mostly LIRF - Rome and for Milan it has always been LIML - Linate, but very rarely do I fly to LIMC-Malpensa. The…

Scenery Upgrade : LEBL - Barcelona XP11 by JustSim There is sometimes no rhyme or reason of why you are attracted to certain aircraft or sceneries. You just are. And that is surprisingly in the case that the actual scenery chosen doesn't have all the features and dynamics that it really should have. But a few like EDDL - Düsseldorf (also by JustSim), ENGM - Oslo Airport, Gardermoen (Aerosoft) and EGCC - Manchester (the old one from Aerosoft) have all been very prominent in many of our reviews, added into that list is LEBL - Barecelona which is again always an outright choice for any flights to or from Spain... if looking hard there is one common theme amongst …

Scenery Review : Mont Blanc Group by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini One scenery a year is expected, two is very nice, but three highly detailed and extensive sceneries at that in one year is incredible, and add in to the fact the type of sceneries that have been released then you simply wonder how it all can be done, but it has and here we go again in traversing another iconic mountain range with Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini's Mont Blanc Group 3D. This release is already after the hugely extensive Eiger Park 3D, and then the Cerro Torre 3D "Los Glaciares" and before that the Matterhorn Park 3D So with this scenery added to the Alp…

Scenery Review : KABQ - Albuquerque International Sunport by ShortFinal Design Welcome to New Mexico! Here is the next ShortFinal Design scenery after their excellent KSLC - Salt Lake City Intl from back in April 2017. As we now well know is that ShortFinal Design is also the great mister_x and it is his sceneries that has created some of the very best sceneries in X-Plane, we also found that KSLC was also his first scenery to be payware after a designer period of being a quality freeware developer. And that makes KABQ - Albuquerque International Sunport a little interesting in because it is only a sniff away and 340nm east of one of mister_x's mas…

Scenery Review : Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International by Butnaru Introduction: Fort Lauderdale ( ICAO: KFLL, IATA: FLL) is Butnaru's latest scenery to be released for X-Plane 10, and no, this is no ordinary scenery! Many new features have been added in this scenery package which make it unique above the rest. Situated in Florida it's surrounded by many other airports, some bigger some smaller. So what makes Fort Lauderdale special? Apart from the fact the others are default scenery! Fort Lauderdale is one of the closest to the Florida shoreline, and has become and intercontinental gateway. If you enjoy long haul flights t…

Sceneries Reinstatement : TruScenery in Finland You can prove your X-Plane credentials if you remember a developer group called TruScenery. Yes they are still actually around, but these hugely popular X-Plane developers decided many moons ago to go solo with their own sales site, and like every thing else in the huge internet ocean they quickly fell off our simulation radar. The point here is that unless you stay close to main flowing streams of the internet, you can be quickly forgotten no matter how good your brand is, non-release or even constant updates of new product can really also help in the context of doing an invisible magic act. Simulation as a whol…